April 2024
Beloved,
Did I not buy a couple of bags of ice melt just the other day? I asked myself this afternoon as I refilled the gas tank of my lawn mower, getting ready for the first-yard work of the year. It has already been a few weeks since Daylight Saving started. It’s Holy Week. We will have Easter Sunday and enter April when you receive this letter. Yes, April is here, even though I can still remember the whiff of champagne from the New Year countdown. Where did the time go!? It is disorienting. Holy Week always puts me in a funny mood like this. You might chuckle and say, “Andrew, you are always in a funny mood!” While I do not disagree with you, I would say the week makes it especially so, perhaps because too many things are packed into this one week. Holy Week is more than having different church services to stroke our piety; Easter is not about bunnies and egg hunts.
Going through this period, we expose ourselves to our character flaws, as seen on Palm Sunday, which demonstrated how quickly those who devoutly followed Jesus to Jerusalem turned on him – just five days from shouting “Hosanna in the highest” to “Crucify him!” Even after two thousand years, we have not changed. We would take pride in our faith over humility in serving others. We are quick to point the finger at somebody to blame than to look at three fingers pointing directly at us to reflect our flaws. Even if we did, how easy is it to cover them with cheap guilt without repentance? Despite such character flaws, Jesus has not quit on us. He still carried his heavy cross, humiliated and crucified, forgave, and redeemed us to teach us just how much God loved us. More importantly, Jesus teaches us how much we must love one another as he loved us. We tend to occupy our minds with God’s love for us than ours for the world.
Just as Holy Week is not just a busy week packed with beautiful services, Easter is not about bunnies and egg hunts. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ after Lent and Holy Week teaches us not to dwell on our brokenness with cheap remorse, self-blame, or undeserving piety. Instead, It is about rising above such spiritual darkness so we may carry forth his teachings as his followers because we will not find the risen Lord in the dark, empty tomb. St. Teresa of Avila said it best:
“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
May the Risen Lord give us strength to see life beyond our brokenness, surprise us with God’s Grace in this troubling world, each other, and our hearts, and grant us hope to carry forth His mission: to love as Jesus has loved us. Happy Easter!
With Love,
Fr. Andrew
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